Ron Gettelfinger has had a rather bumpy ride as president of the United Auto Workers union, but he brought a message of hope with him to a meeting of the International Motor Press Association on Thursday in New York.þþ“Since December of 2007, we’ve lost 2.1 million manufacturing jobs, and when Obama took office, we were losing 700,000 jobs a month,” Mr. Gettelfinger said.þþ“It’s sad,” he said. “But things are turning around.”þþMr. Gettelfinger said he expected vehicle sales in the United States to total 12 million this year, up from 10.4 million in 2009.þþ“We think the May figures will tell us the strength of the industry, but Ford is firing on all cylinders, G.M. is coming on strong and people who write off Sergio Marchionne are making a big mistake,” he said. Mr. Marchionne is the chief executive of Fiat, which owns a stake in Chrysler.þþMr. Gettelfinger is credited with helping to persuade the Obama administration to grant the union stock in exchange for debt the companies owed to the health care funds. In 2007, he persuaded union members to vote for concessions that led to the establishment of a retiree health care fund — a move that gave the Detroit automakers back billions of dollars earmarked for health care. But the recession resulted in the loss of thousands of jobs.þþLast year, the U.A.W. lost 75,846 members, nearly 18 percent of its work force, which now stands at 355,191 members, a post-World War II low.þþMr. Gettelfinger also addressed the country’s trade deficit. Citing figures from 2009, he said that “in a recession year, total auto imports from Korea to the United States was $8.3 billion. U.S. imports to Korea were $4.1 million. We believe in trade, but we think it ought to be fair.”þ
Source: NY Times
